A criminal-author-addict's joyous London chapter

He was a notorious Canadian bank robber. Then an acclaimed author married to a literary star. Then, painfully, a relapsed drug addict back behind bars.

But it was during a relatively brief stint living in London’s Blackfriars neighbourhood that Stephen Reid — who died this week at age 68 — may have enjoyed something even more remarkable: Love and happiness.

“I lived in London for a year . . . it was one of the best years of my life,” his widow, acclaimed poet Susan Musgrave, said in a 2013 speech at the London Public Library.

“I feel very nostalgic for this place . . . because my family was together then, and we were happy.”

The Stopwatch Gang, including Stephen Reid, robbed nearly 100 banks in the 1970s before being caught.

Musgrave was writer-in-residence at Western University from 1992-93, according to her online resume. A former neighbour says she and Reid lived in the city’s Blackfriars neighbourhood, where they were well-liked.

Reid’s colourful life was well-known then. It’s something of a Canadian legend that’s been revisited since his death due to heart troubles on Tuesday.

He couldn’t stop robbing banks but also couldn’t stop writing — and found love with Musgrave because of it.

Of Irish and Ojibwa descent, Reid’s notoriety began in the 1970s as part of the Stopwatch Gang, a group of three that executed a series of meticulously planned bank heists that took just 90 seconds to complete, all while wearing stopwatches around their necks.

The gang’s No. 1 rule was: “Nobody gets hurt.”

Their first heist was $750,000 in bullion, taken at the Ottawa airport in 1974. The gang robbed nearly 100 banks and got away with an estimated $15 million before being captured.

He landed a 21-year prison sentence and wrote a novel, Jackrabbit Parole, while behind bars at Kent Institution in Agassiz, B.C. In 1984, the manuscript landed in the hands of Musgrave, a talented poet.

The novel, a semi-autobiographical account about the Stopwatch Gang, won critical acclaim and also launched a relationship between the two. They married in 1986.

Reid won full parole in 1987 and eventually became stepfather to Charlotte, and they soon had Sophie, a daughter of their own. He would teach creative writing and also worked as a youth counsellor for a time in the Northwest Territories.

Then there was the year in London, during which Musgrave was Western’s writer-in-residence.

But trouble loomed. Reid struggled with drug addiction and, in June 1999, found himself — high on heroin and cocaine — in a botched bank robbery that included an exchange of gunfire with Victoria, B.C. police and saw him take an elderly couple hostage in a nearby apartment building. He nodded off to sleep and the police arrested him. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Stephen Reid

Incarcerated at William Head Institution in Victoria, he kept writing and he won the 2013 Butler Book Prize for a collection of essays entitled A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden.

“My life was mostly defined by ex’s these days, ex-smoker, ex-con, ex-bank robber, ex-addict. But there was always one shadow I could never seem to turn into an ex — a sense that I am as separate from this world as a switchblade knife,” he wrote.

He was granted parole in February 2014.

“Addiction, it just overwhelms your life, you spend all your time tortured by your addiction, scheming for money for the drugs, hiding it from other people or trying to, so the addiction is this huge monster that sits on top of you, and you try to live your life while you are being squashed by it,” he told The Vancouver Sun in 2014.

He said his latest stint in jail was his penance.

He would initially live in a halfway house in Victoria and would visit Charlotte’s home.

Eventually, he and Musgrave would move north in B.C. to Haida Gwaii, where they ran the Copper Beech Guest House.

Musgrave said in a statement that Reid died in hospital after being diagnosed with a lung infection and heart failure.

“It is with deep grief that I write with the news that … Reid died on Tuesday … in the Masset hospital on Haida Gwaii. Cause of death: pulmonary edema, and third-degree heart block.”

Her statement said when Reid was admitted to hospital, seven killer whales came into the community inlet, which the local Haida First Nations believe is a sign that someone is going to die.

Reid’s Canadian publishing house, Thistledown Press, said the author held a large audience of readers who understood he knew about prison life from serving time in more than 20 American and Canadian prisons over 40 years.

“What those who love notoriety sometimes forget is that Stephen Reid grew old in prisons and saw more than his share of their solitude, their vicious cycles, and their subculture relationships,” said the statement.

Thistledown publisher Allan Forrie said Reid’s health was failing in recent years. “Stephen lived a hard life,” he said in a phone interview.

“There’s a certain amount of celebrity that surrounds Stephen simply because of his criminal past, but I kind of knew him more as just a real human being who was a husband, a father and a grandfather.”

Reid is survived by Musgrave, his wife of 31 years, his daughters Charlotte Musgrave and Sophie Reid Jenkins, and granddaughters Beatrice Musgrave and Lucca Musgrave.

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